Page 44 of Veil of Vasara (Fate of the Five #1)

CHAPTER 44- BAZ

U llna, Yaseer, and Fasal were standing around a small table. In front of it, was a lacklustre and round object. They were staring at it with mute alertness, glaring at it as if they expected it to come to life and attack them.

Nyla, however, was sitting down, filing her nails with a small blade. She looked up at me as I entered.

“Nice,” she gestured at my clothing.

I glanced down. I was wearing a shirt, rose coloured, and sheer, with embroidery throughout it. It was long and formed a jacket that matched pants of a similar material.

Ullna regarded me with a scowl.

“You’re back,” I smiled at Nyla, stating the obvious. “How was it?”

“Perfect.” She grinned contentedly. “It all went according to plan.”

“That’s good. Better than here anyway.” I immediately regretted my words. Ullna slid her gaze in my direction with a look that said, “ No thanks to you.”

I cleared my throat. “What’s that?” I pointed at the object and moved closer.

“This,” Yaseer sighed, “Is what we wish to speak with you about.”

I stood still, frowning, waiting for them to explain.

“This is an enolith,” he stated.

I looked sideways at Nyla. I had no idea what that meant. They had stated it as if I did.

“You don’t know what an enolith is?” Yaseer realised.

“No…”

“It’s a communication stone. Only sorcerers can use it. One sorcerer can send messages to another from a long distance once they are trained in how to use one.”

“So, you’ve received a message? Who from?” I asked.

“That’s precisely the point,” Ullna answered, “We haven’t.”

“The stone remains alight with a warm glow, as long as it is in the sorcerer’s possession. But this…this stone has been dulled for days.”

Yaseer looked at me with reproach, and… pity.

No.

“It’s hers, isn’t it?” My voice was thin with anxiety.

“Yes. It’s Nemina’s”

I let out a harsh laugh and stepped closer to the table. “I told you when we hadn’t heard from her there was something wrong, but you assured me there wasn’t!”

“It was not the lack of communication that concerned me,” Yaseer was calm.

“It should have though…shouldn’t it?” I outstretched my palms.

“How dare you—" Ullna started.

“You are new,” Yaseer interrupted, sensing her anger. “A lack of communication is quite common when a sorcerer within our group leaves to undertake a task. That is why the stone’s light is there to assure us of their safety.”

I shook my head, frustrated. “In other circumstances, I’d understand why you would think that, but you sent her to Vasara . Her lack of communication should have been more…more…alarming!” I could feel myself getting flustered.

“Perhaps that is true.” Yaseer let out a large breath. Fasal remained silent. He had been withdrawn since Riece had been taken. He couldn’t meet my eyes. I assumed he blamed me for his capture.

“Let me—"

“We were about to ask you to go, to investigate,” Yaseer cut me off.

I gathered myself. “Didn’t you say it was too dangerous for me to go? Too dangerous to let two Accipereans walk away from here?”

“Yes, but you are the person most likely to find her. You are a Telepath.”

I jerked my head back in confusion. “I’m not…I’m not anything yet.”

“But you will be,” Yaseer said, “I can tell.”

“Sense transformation.” Nyla pointed at Yaseer, answering my unspoken question. “It allows the user to enhance their own senses, and the senses of others, as well as take them away. They can sense the source of sorcery inside someone’s core, and detect exactly what type, class, and ability a sorcerer has, or…will have, while other sorcerers can only guess.”

Yaseer was a Sense Transformer.

I had been right, class two. He was powerful. Very powerful.

“But that man…he said we needed, you said we needed a Telepath.” My thoughts were running away with me. I didn’t say more. I didn’t know if Nyla or Fasal had been informed about the suspicions of a traitor in our group.

“Do you want to leave or not?” Ullna crossed her arms.

“Yes. Of course, I do, but I don’t understand.”

“You are right, we do need a Telepath, for many reasons, but right now, finding Nemina is our priority,” Yaseer told me.

A realisation dawned upon me.

“Does that mean...that you know what Nemina’s ability is as well…what it will be?”

Yaseer and Ullna looked at each other. “I cannot tell,” he said dejectedly.

“What? But you just said—"

“She is different.” Yaseer raised his voice slightly.

I thought back to the way that he had reacted when he had approached Nemina, the first day we arrived, how quickly he had demanded Riece find Nyla.

He wanted her back.

He needed her back.

Why he did, I didn’t feel particularly good about the possibilities. But either way, finding Nemina, and bringing her here, was surely safer than leaving her out there, alone.

“And you’re taking Faina with you.”

“Faina? But why?”

“She escaped from Vasara. She knows it better than anyone else here.”

“Escaped? Nobody has ever escaped from a draining centre surely?” My voice flattened. Didn’t this make Faina seem like the traitor?

“That’s what we thought. But she wasn’t in the draining centre. The King had taken her out, as well as two other Vessels. It seemed he intended to use them for his own plans, but in doing so, was careless. One of them managed to free the others and Faina escaped before they could catch up to her,” Yaseer explained.

“How do you know? She could be lying.”

“She isn’t,” Yaseer assured me. “The situation occurred during the King’s Coronation, people have spoken of it since.”

I raised my brows. During the Coronation? “And what happened to the others?”

“We don’t know. We assume they were caught. Faina told us the Vessel who’d set her free refused to come with her. It seems his delay was a fatal error on his part.”

“But don’t you think…that she could…” I looked at Ullna and Yaseer meaningfully.

“It’s unlikely,” Yaseer smiled.

“It’s possible, but I agree, otherwise why share that with us?” Ullna added.

I shook my head, unable to think of a logical reason.

“Alright…but why not leave now…Why tomorrow?” I pointed to the direction of Vasara, west of here.

“Because tonight…I’m going to help you access your powers,” Nyla stood.

“In one night?” My voice lowered in scepticism.

“One night is a very long time…to do a lot of wonderful things.” She winked.

I moved backwards. “I’m not…urrr... interested.”

Nyla laughed lightly. “I know, I know, but watching you blush is so fun!”

“Isn’t there anyone else who can train me?” I mumbled.

“Nyla is the best,” Yaseer said softly. “Despite her…methods.”

A few minutes later, after receiving further instructions and my own enolith, Nyla and I walked a fair distance from the camp, ready to train. This was a familiar routine by now. She had been helping both Nemina and I grow more in touch with the core and source of our sorcery since we had arrived.

She was playful and seemed as if she took nothing too seriously, that she worried about nothing. I knew it wasn’t true but still, in ways, I envied her.

“What…” I began to ask then stopped myself. “No, you probably can’t tell me.” I looked to the side.

“What was my task?” Nyla said, raising her chin.

“I was only curious but—"

“I was in Kalnasa,” Nyla answered to my surprise. “Which you already know. You also know that I was there a while ago, but what you don’t know , is that I was there to deliver a message. I went back to see how things were progressing.”

I waited for a few seconds before asking, “And?”

“And the recipient is no longer in Kalnasa.”

I looked at her sharply. “I thought you said your task had gone well.”

“That’s precisely why it had,” she wiggled her eyebrows.

“I heard…from the others there are riots there now.”

“Yes.” Nyla sounded mournful. She was from Kalnasa by birth after all. “It’s…terrifying.”

I could spend hours ruminating about the various things Nyla might have seen, or done, and probably still not come up with the full list of possibilities. If she said the situation was terrifying, then I could only imagine how brutal it was.

“I’m sorry.”

“You’re sorry?” She laughed. “Why?”

“It’s your…well it was your home.”

“It’s no different to anywhere else. Conflict, fighting, that happens in every Kingdom.”

“But we’re trying to change that, right?”

“Yes. But what’s happening there is beyond us.”

“Is it? I mean if Nourishers were allowed to live in peace, they could grow the food.”

Nyla furrowed her brows. “I had thought about that. Why haven’t they used them?”

“Maybe…they already have,” I said softly, trying to make the disgusting reality of the situation hit less harshly.

“You’re right…of course you’re right. That would have been the first thing that they did. The lives of sorcerers don’t matter after all,” she huffed.

“Who did you deliver the message to?”

“Mmmm. Not sure I can tell you that. But I knew him a long time ago. He always wanted to do the right thing. Seemed like a good choice.”

“He sounds…urmmm…wonderful?” I said unsure.

She laughed again. “He was…is. That’s why we chose him.”

“What happened then? You said that you knew him.”

“The war happened.”

“So, you met him when you were a child?”

She nodded. “I met him when he was eight, and I was seven. The war started when I was nine. I managed to live in Kalnasa after that for a few years, right up until I was around sixteen, but then—"

“Your abilities emerged,” I finished her sentence.

“Yes, quite late, wasn’t it? But after that, I left. I didn’t even get a chance to say goodbye to him properly.”

She sat down on the grass, motioning for me to do the same.

“How can you be so sure he’s as wonderful as he was back then?” I put to her.

“I hear things. I see things.”

I raised my eyebrows quickly as if to verbalise, “ If you say so.”

“He hates sorcerers though.”

I frowned. “Well now I’m confused with your decision.”

“They killed his family.”

“That… isn’t helping,” I said carefully.

“Most people hate sorcerers, what’s the difference?” She shrugged.

“You just said they killed his family. It sounds different enough to me.”

Nyla looked me in the eyes suddenly. She didn’t say anything, but for some reason her abrupt eye contact made me change my tone.

“Do you think he’ll change his mind?”

“I think… that if he finds out what we want him to… then he won’t be able to ignore it. He’ll be forced to confront it, and he won’t shy away from doing so. That’s just who he was. Who he is.”

“You sound like you’re in love with him,” I joked, raising an eyebrow.

She smiled sadly. “I confess, as a child, I thought he and I would get married. But…I was a child.”

“That doesn’t mean you can’t love him now.”

“How can you love someone you don’t even know?”

I shrugged. “People hate others they don’t even know. Emotions don’t really make any sense.”

Nyla tilted her head in thought. “I suppose. But… I don’t love him.” She looked up at the dark sky. “I care for him. He will always be a part of my past and my life. But he is not a part of my future.”

“He might be…you don’t know that.”

“He might be a part of all of our future’s, but not mine alone. Besides” — she chuckled — “you wouldn’t believe the number of girls who threw themselves at him and he never even batted an eye. He didn’t seem to care about anything like that at all.”

I couldn’t help but think of an obvious reason for that.

I decided to keep it to myself.

“What’s his name?” I asked.

Nyla raised her eyebrows.

“Is that something I’m allowed to know?”

She let out a short chuckle. That was a no.

“So, this… man, you’ve gambled the uncovering of this information on his good will?” I looked at her tentatively.

She nodded slowly. “It sounds absurd, I know.”

“No.” I shook my head. “It’s nice to believe that someone out there might have enough of a good will to take such a large risk on,” I glanced at the ground, fiddling with the dry grass.

“What about you?” Nyla called out to me. “You and Nemina you’re…aren’t you?”

Ahhh, yes. The act that Nemina and I had agreed upon when we had arrived here, to be hopelessly in love, to be each other’s partner. Although Nemina’s self-isolation had certainly made that a difficult task, it was still one we had succeeded in overall, surprisingly. My concern for her was probably helping.

I tried to sound confident. "Yes, we're…together."

“Sure.” She winked, making it clear she didn’t believe me.

“Why ask if you know the answer?” I sighed.

“It’s fun to watch you blush is why.”

“I thought we were supposed to be training.”

“We will, but who said that we can’t talk too, about love, life, and everything else.”

“We don’t have much time.”

“Oh, come on. It took minutes and look at what we’ve discovered. You and Nemina are destined to be together until the end of time, while I’m destined to die alone, obsessed with stalking a man who will never love me!” She pressed her palm to her chest in a mocking sob.

I couldn’t help but laugh a little.

"You know they're only destroying the very world they live in," she stated suddenly. Coldly.

I paused for a moment before replying, startled by the abrupt shift in her tone.

"They think they're saving it," I whispered. It wasn't an attempt to defend them only... explain it to her. Not that she needed, or wanted me to try.

She scoffed, and began playing with blades of grass between her fingers. "The world is like a large basin of water. When a Darean uses sorcery, it fills up. When an Acciperean uses it, it empties a little. They're both meant to exist. We're both meant to exist. But they think they can craft our lives carefully, control them, and the flow of sorcery. But what they're doing with the drainings, the way they're extracting it from us, and releasing it into the world unnaturally, it will never be the same. And without Accipereans living long enough to draw breath and bear children, this world won't last. But...it's...it's as if they don't care. Because they can't see the devastation it will cause after they're gone, only the problems they face now. Ones theyhelped create."

Everything she was saying rang true, but still, it settled in my chest uncomfortably like a blade between my lungs, or down my throat. A sharp reality to swallow.

"Do you think we can change that?" I whispered, my gaze drifting to the side.

Nyla's fingers stilled. "I don't know. But we have to try...right?" She glanced up at me, excepting a reply.

I nodded. "Right. If everyone gave up at the despair of the world, and never tried to change anything, even if they knew they wouldn't live to see that change become reality... we'd all have died... long ago," I said.

It seemed like she needed to hear those words. Or I did. Another reality to swallow. Not a harsh one however, but one full of agonising hope.

She smiled slowly, gently. Then she stood.

She lifted a dagger and aimed it at me.

I got up quickly. “What are you doing?!” I raised my hands, and the pitch of my voice increased.

“In a moment, I’m going to close my eyes and start throwing daggers at you. I’ve got a whole bag, see?” She pointed to the bag she had brought with her. I hadn’t even thought to ask what the contents were.

Because I hadn’t supposed it would be an endless supply of knives.

“Why?!” I said exasperated.

“I can’t tell if one of them is going to hit you, can I? So…make me stop.”

“You’re…this…this is why that poor man didn’t want you!”

She laughed and closed her eyes. “You and I both know that the best way for someone’s abilities to emerge is under stress and pressure.”

“This isn’t stressful, it's life threatening!” I shouted.

“Keep your voice downnnnnn .” She sounded perfectly calm, as if we were still discussing our falsified love affairs.

“I’m sorry but it’s hard to remain calm when—”

I was interrupted by a knife flying in my direction. I ducked.

“Nyla, let’s do this another—"

Another one. She had stated that she ‘wasn’t sure’ if they would hit me, but even with her eyes closed, she could tell that I had ducked, and aimed the knife lower.

“Right…I don’t even know how to do this—"

She threw another one. “Just reach inside yourself, tap into the source, and use that energy to bend your will into shape. Use it to bend mine, use it to reach into my mind. You can do it. Just get on with it!”

She kept throwing and throwing and throwing.

I dodged one blow after another. This continued for several minutes.

“How am I supposed to reach inside and tap into my source if I can barely catch my breath?”

“You’re right, I’m sure the people in Vasara will let you take a rest, and give you plenty of time to reach inside your source to kill them.”

I scowled. I began to try, but it was like stopping and starting a fire. Each time I was attacked, the flame died a little, and maintaining it was almost impossible.

The next dagger cut across my cheek.

“Tsssk.”

“Ooooh did I hit your pretty face? I’m sure Nemina will still love you all the—"

Nyla froze, her arm mid-air.

She laughed.

“Now look at that. You might just be able to save your beauty after all.”